New Comm Biz

This really caught my eye last week. While Twitter experiments with promoting services on the side panel, FriendFeed seems to be experimenting with ‘in stream’ advertising.

The ad is their own. It’s even says “Shameless self-promotion” in it. This is obviously trying to help people connect with people they already know, which brings value to the whole network, FriendFeed and the user. What’s missing is the ability to like and comment on it. This is something I wish they enabled. Maybe they were afraid of the conversation that would ensue.

Conversational Advertising

If this is the way of the future for FriendFeed it brings up some interesting possibilities. Depending on your network some items don’t stay around very long which means you have to wonder about value.  Users also have the ability to hide any content on FriendFeed so it would be very easy to block ads from having to be seen.

However if ads were enabled with likes and comments we could see the first true conversational advertising. Unlike Facebook which enable you to thumb up or down ads, imagine the ability to leave comments on ads that your entire network could see and comment on as well.

It would take a very brave brand to jump in to this space. You are leaving your company and your advertising wide open. However if companies approach this as an opportunity to engage the FriendFeed community instead of advertise to them the engagement ROI could be huge.

If you’re wondering what the FriendFeed community thinks about it you can see Louis Gray’s thread on it.

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